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SLOW HOMER IN THE ADIRONE
WINSLOW HOMER IN THE ADIRONDACKS
1. Guide Carrying Deer
Lent by Mr. Charles S. Payson
Watercolor 1891
I%31
.Hi
WINSLOW
"HOMER
IN THE
ADIRONDACKS
AN EXHIRITION OF PAINTINGS • ADIRONDACK MUSEUM • RLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE, N.Y.
15 AUGUST— 15 SEPT. 1959
/Yp
A u
© 1959 Adirondack Museum
Designed by Robert Bruce Inverarity
Lithographed by The Widtman Press, Inc.
FOREWORD
Of all the artists who have found the Adirondack area a
well spring, none are as well-known as Winslow Homer.
This is the artist whose work gives the observer an immedi-
ate rapport with the country, its loneliness, its vastness, its
intimacy, its silence, its moodiness and its grandeur. The
poetical quality of many Homer Adirondack paintings con-
trast strongly with the work of other painters of the Adi-
rondacks.
Three years ago this museum decided that a showing of
Homer's Adirondack work should be its first major exhibi-
tion and we are indeed glad that at last the thought has be-
come reality. Not only did we wish to bring back to the
Adirondacks a group of the paintings created here, but we
wished to produce a catalogue which might serve as a refer-
ence to Homer's Adirondack work. In order to widen this
facet of the exhibition we have illustrated in this publication
many of his paintings that are not in the exhibition. We
have also included a catalogue of Homer's Adirondack
work. The variances in titles of his paintings, changes made
by subsequent owners, have often produced confusion and
for this reason the earliest title has been given. The title in
parenthesis, after an illustrated painting, is another that has
been given to the painting at some period in its life.
Exhibitions such as this are the result of the generosity of
understanding people. The private collectors will stare at
empty spaces on their walls and museums must rearrange
their galleries. All the lenders deserve our grateful thanks
for making it possible for others to share their paintings.
The outstanding Homer scholar, Mr. Lloyd Goodrich, and
his wife, Edith Havens Goodrich, have made available to
me their extensive files of research on Winslow Homer and
assisted in every phase of preparing the exhibition. My
gratitude also goes to Mr. James W. Fosburgh, painter and
critic, for his sensitive essay on Homer's Adirondack life
and painting.
For their assistance in many ways we extend our gratitude
to Mr. Lewis Adams, Mrs. Benjamin Bibby, Mr. Warder
Cadbury, Mr. John Curry, Mr. Hugh Fosburgh, Mrs. Eliza-
beth Filkins, Mr. Godfrey Gaston, Mr. and Mrs. H. K.
Hochschild, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Hochschild, Mrs. Blanche
Isham, Mr. Carman Messmore, Mr. Helmut Ripperger,
Mrs. Harry Surprenant, Mr. Rudi Wunderlich, M. Knoedler
and Co., Inc., New York City, New York; Kennedy Gal-
leries, New York City, New York; E. Weyhe, Inc., New
York City, New York; and the following institutions and
their staffs: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Wil-
liamstown, Massachusetts; The Corcoran Gallery of Art,
Washington, D. C. ; The Henry Gallery, University of
Washington, Seattle, Washington; The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, New York City, New York; Museum of Art,
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island;
National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D. C; National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D. C; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsyl-
vania; Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art, Wash-
ington, D. C.
Acknowledgement is made to the following lenders with-
out whose unselfishness the exhibition would not have been
possible: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Acad-
emy, Andover, Massachusetts; Bowdoin College Museum
of Fine Arts, Brunswick, Maine; The Century Association,
New York City, New York; The Cooper Union Museum,
New York City, New York; Mr. Lawrence Fleischman;
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts; Mr. and Mrs. James W. Fosburgh; Mr. and
Mrs. Pieter W. Fosburgh; Mrs. Charles R. Henschel; Hir-
schl and Adler Galleries, New York City, New York; Col-
lection IBM Corporation, New York City, New York;
North Woods Club, Minerva, New York; Mr. Charles S.
Payson; Mr. Peter A. Salm; Dr. and Mrs. S. Emlen Stokes;
Mr. Alexander White; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester,
Massachusetts.
Also, my thanks to my staff, Miss Sally DeVaney and
Mr. Ralph Raymond.
Robert Bruce Inverarity, Director
Adirondack Museum
INTRODUCTION
Among American artists of the past, Winslow Homer was
one of the strongest and most vital. He was our greatest pic-
torial poet of outdoor life in America. Since he spent many
seasons in the Adirondack region and did some of his best
work there, it is fitting that the Adirondack Museum should
be the first to hold an exhibition of his pictures of the region,
and to publish a book devoted to this phase of his art.
Winslow Homer was born in 1836 in Boston, of an old
Massachusetts family. He was practically self-taught. Ap-
prenticed at nineteen to a Boston lithographer, at twenty-
one he launched himself as a free-lance illustrator, especially
for Harper's Weekly. Soon he was one of the best-known
illustrators in the country, notable for his strongly native
subjects and flavor. In 1859 he moved to New York, which
was to be his winter home for over twenty years. He did not
begin to paint seriously until he was twenty-six, when after
a few lessons he went out into the country and began paint-
ing directly from nature.
From boyhood Homer loved outdoor life — sailing,
fishing, hunting, mountaineering. He was a born wanderer,
and every summer found him in the deep country of New
England or eastern New York State. Sometimes it was the
fashionable world of summer resorts — the White Moun-
tains, the North Shore of Massachusetts, Long Branch.
More often it was the simpler world of the old-fashioned
Yankee farm, or the still more primitive world of the woods
and the sea. It was these summer months in the country
that furnished subjects for all his early works.
From the very first Homer's art was that of a man who
saw nature with his own eyes, and painted it as he saw it,
with little perceptible influence from other artists. He had
a fresh eye for outdoor light and color, unaffected by the
studio conventions of the time. His first-hand observation,
his bold, direct style, his large simplified massing of lights
and shadows, and his instinctive sense of decorative values,
made him an independent American pioneer of impression-
ism, before the French movement was known in America
or indeed had emerged in France. Another curious parallel
was with Japanese prints, which he probably saw through
his friend John La Farge. Not until he was thirty, in 1866,
did he go abroad, spending a year in France, mostly paint-
ing in the country.
Homer was thirty-seven when he first took up watercolor
as a major medium. The medium suited him perfectly, for
he was essentially an observer and graphic recorder of na-
ture, and in watercolor he could work directly outdoors,
finishing his picture in a single sitting. Because of the trans-
parency of the medium, with the white paper showing
through the washes of color, he at once secured clearer and
higher color than he had in oils. It was in watercolor that
he was to achieve his discoveries and advances — in sub-
jects, in color and light, in technical skill. From 1873 on,
almost every summer produced a series of watercolors,
which registered his steady growth as an artist.
Two seasons in England, 1881 and 1882, at the picturesque
fishing port of Tynemouth on the North Sea, marked a
turning point in Homer's career. Here, working almost
entirely in watercolor, he first began to devote himself to
the sea and to those who go down to the sea in ships —
thenceforth one of his dominant themes. After his return to
America he left New York for good, and settled in a lonely
spot on the rugged Maine coast, Prout's Neck. Here he
lived the rest of his life, absolutely alone, painting the great
epics of the sea and the forest on which his fame rests.
Though Prout's Neck was his home, he had not lost his
relish for seeing other parts of the world. Almost every year
he spent a few months in the Adirondacks, Quebec, the
Bahamas, Florida or Bermuda. The Adirondack region in
particular played an important part in his life and work.
He and his older brother Charles, devoted companions, and
inveterate campers, hunters and fishermen, spent many
summers together in the northern woods. Of Winslow as an
angler, his brother once said, "He did not go in much for
expensive or elaborate tackle, but he usually caught the
biggest fish." His first known visit to the Adirondacks was
in 1870; he was there again in 1874, and probably in 1876
and 1880. Most of these early stays were in Keene Valley
and Minerva. In the late 1880's the brothers began coming
regularly to the North Woods Club, of which they were
charter members. For Winslow, these visits combined sport
and art. Almost every season from 1889 through 1894 saw
the creation of many watercolors picturing the beauties of
this unspoiled region — the forest, the mountains, the lakes
and streams, the wild life, and the native guides, hunters
and fishermen. Most of these watercolors give evidence of
having been painted outdoors, "on the spot," though of
course not from the model when the latter was a leaping
trout or a running deer.
This series of Adirondack watercolors marked a new step
in Homer's artistic development. His watercolors had al-
ways been in advance of his oils in freshness of vision, phy-
sical immediacy, spontaneity of handling, and brilliancy of
color. Never before, however, had they exhibited these
qualities in such purity. Never had his art been so close to
its primal source — nature. But this direct naturalism was
combined with an extraordinary sureness of form and de-
sign, so that these watercolors were at once vivid records of
reality, and compositions whose bold linear rhythms, mag-
nificent color and superb decorative patterns ranked them
among his most perfect artistic achievements. Like his early
works they recall the Japanese printmakers, but now with
a new mastery.
By contrast with the number of his watercolors, Homer
painted relatively few Adirondack oils, though they in-
cluded some of his most important canvases — The Two
Guides, Campfire, Huntsman and Dogs and Hound and
Hunter. While the Adirondacks were his favorite camping
grounds, Prout's Neck was his home and studio, where he
could work in the heavier medium. But the cleansing of his
eye and the training of his hand during these Adirondack
summers were to bear fruit in the notable new freshness of
color and handling that marked his Maine oils from the
middle 1890's on. The great marine paintings of his maturity and painted a few watercolors there that were among his
would not have been the same without the refreshment of most powerful. His last known visit was in June and July,
his Adirondack experience. 1908. He died in his studio at Prout's Neck in 1910.
From 1895 the Homer brothers varied their Adirondack
visits with trips to the wilds of Quebec. But Winslow Homer Lloyd Goodrich, Director
continued to visit the North Woods Club every few years, Whitney Museum of American Art
WINSLOW HOMER AND THE ADIRONDACKS
The enormous amount of historical and critical material that
has been written on the life and work of Winslow Homer
has most usually tended to emphasize his "Americanism,"
his localism and his realism. This was true even during his
lifetime. Henry James, although he found some things to
admire in Homer's painting, objected strongly to what
seemed to him provincialism in his work, and almost every
other commentator even today has stressed at length this
realism, this "Americanism.'''
It is true there are exceptions to this. As long ago as 1911,
the year after Homer's death. Frank Jewett Mather, in a
review of the memorial show of his work, held that year in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, pointed out
the influence of Manet and of Japanese prints on his work.
Mr. Lloyd Goodrich also drew attention to this in his cata-
logue of the Homer show held at the Whitney Museum in
1936. In the catalogue of the recent exhibition, held at the
National Gallery in Washington and later at the Metropoli-
tan Museum in New York, Mr. Albert Ten Eyck Gardiner
has explored this area of influence on his work and attrib-
uted a much larger importance to it. Also Mr. Goodrich in
his definitive biography of Homer has written beautifully
of the truly lyrical qualities existing in his work, those qual-
ities which Henry James failed to perceive.
A writer attempting an essay on the limited aspect of
Homer's painting, that done in the Adirondacks, is inevit-
ably tempted to again stress the essentially American and
especially in this instance, the purely local aspects of his
painting. It seems to me that to do this again would be fruit-
less. After all, the fact that his work has a peculiarly Ameri-
can flavor, which it has, is not enough to arouse and hold
our interest; there have been many painters possessing this
quality that do not so attract our attention. Rather it is im-
portant to discover what it is in his painting that makes him
a great artist, whose work has an ever increasing appeal to
a constantly growing audience of both connoisseurs and
laymen, quite apart from nationality or subject matter. We
must concern ourselves with those special qualities, that
particular and personal factor in his work which seizes the
imagination of each observer, holds his interest and causes
us to apply the adjective "great." If we can discover what
those things are, what the specifics of his inspired vision
were, I think we shall also find out what the importance of
the Adirondacks was to him and put the place of the local
scene in its right perspective.
The first thing that comes to mind is his extraordinary
originality. This is something that it is easy to overlook now
that time has made us very familiar with his pictures, al-
though it was noted during his lifetime and by present day
critics as well. Kenyon Cox wrote: "He was always making
the most unexpected observations and painting things that
were not only not painted till then but apparently unseen
by anyone else."
11
Mr. Goodrich points out that: "Homer's Adirondack
phase was a new departure in American water color paint-
ing. Up to this time most work in this medium had been in
the old style of finished representation, even in the hands of
progressive artists like Inness, Martin, LaFarge and Eakins.
Nothing like the freedom and brilliancy of these works had
been seen before in this country."
It is perhaps possible to explain this on the grounds of
outside influence on his work. But I am inclined to think
that it was more the product of an original and extremely
personal approach to his subject matter. Comparison with
the work of other artists is useful here.
Winslow Homer was not the first to paint the Adiron-
dacks. Artists of the Hudson River School had been there
before and others were to follow. Such men as Jasper Crop-
sey, J. F. Kensett, Asher B. Durand and Homer Martin had
all painted in the Adirondacks. The work of all of these men,
almost without exception, have qualities in common. They
painted panoramic pictures. Kensett's view of Lake George
(pi. 36) is an excellent example. All of these artists were
painters of views, and they sought them out, making expedi-
tions to the Catskills, the White Mountains and the Adiron-
dacks in order to find suitable material to illustrate their
vision of nature. The vision itself was based on a number
of things.
To begin with, they were all part of the romantic move-
ment and their attitude toward nature was that of the trans-
cendentalists. The influence of Emerson is apparent in all
their works.
"There are days which occur in this climate, at almost
any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfec-
tion, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make
a harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring; when,
in these bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire
that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in
the shining hours of Florida and Cuba . . . The day, im-
measurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide
fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours, seems
longevity enough. The solitary places do not seem quite
lonely. At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the
world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small,
wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back
with the first step he makes into these precincts. Here is
sancity which shames our religions, and reality which dis-
credits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circum-
stance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges
like a god all men that come to her. We have crept out of
our close and crowded houses into the night and morning,
and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their
bosom. How willingly we would escape the barriers which
render them comparatively impotent, escape the sophistica-
tion and second thought, and suffer nature to entrance us.
The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning,
and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells
of these places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks,
and oaks, almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. The
incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with
them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no history, or
church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the
immortal year. How easily we might walk onward into the
12
opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by
thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the
recollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all mem-
ory obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were
led in triumph by nature."
The above quotation from Emerson's "Nature" sums up
the transcendentalists view of nature. Noble as it is, it has
very little to do with the actual lives of men and women
struggling for existence in the wilderness. And it is a point
of view very different from Homer's. One thinks, looking at
pictures of the Hudson River School, of the poetry of the
time — Longfellow's "forest primeval" and Bryant's "Than-
atopsis." In fact, these paintings were dominated by liter-
ary romanticism. Their ambition was to paint heroic land-
scape, a literary conception rather than a visual one, and
although they painted every leaf on every tree, they never
painted the actual details of the landscape itself. Moreover,
almost all of them had studied abroad, for the most part in
Italy, and the influence of Claude's idyllic landscape is evi-
dent in their work. Like the poets of their time, they delt
with nature in a grand and general sense, but rarely of its
actualities, or of the life lived in close relationship to it.
Although many of their pictures have a nostalgic charm
which is real and moving, today we tend to discount them
as great painting.
If, on the other hand, one were to compare Homer's
painting to poetry, it seems to me one would at once think
of Whitman, another innovater.
"You shall no longer take things at second
or third hand nor look through the
eyes of the dead, nor feed on the
spectre in books
You shall not look through my eyes either
nor take things from me
You shall listen to all sides and filter them
for yourself."
Homer, to the best of my knowledge, never painted a
panoramic landscape, and when views do occur, they are
specific and endowed with a special mood and meaning
peculiarly their own and Homer's.
He painted details of the Adirondacks and populated his
pictures with figures that emphasize the special relationship
of man to nature which moved him, and motivated his
work. Not only did he paint details of landscape — noticing
as Kenyon Cox pointed out, things that had never been
seen before — but he chose to depict details that illustrated
the specific qualities of the landscape that were meaningful
to him; moods of climate, weather, time of day — of atmos-
pheric effect. He would wait for days for the precise light
that he wished to paint, in order to make his very personal
statement. The dominant mood in the Adirondack pictures
is one of quiet, of stillness, remoteness and solitude. He
seems to have been preoccupied with the loneliness of the
human spirit, particularly in relation to nature, and this fact
gives even his most realistic paintings a larger meaning. He
felt this strongly; he was a lonely man and probably by
choice.
13
Here some account of life in the Adirondacks from the
1870's until Homer's last visit in 1908 will suggest the nature
of the attraction this landscape and this life held for him.
This writer has been unable to ascertain the dates and lengths
of his stay in Keene Valley, except that he was certainly there
in 1876 when he painted the large oil Two Guides now in the
Clark Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts (pi. 39). It is
even possible to identify the figures. A fellow painter, Ros-
well Shurtleff, has written that the older man was a famous
local character known as "Old Mountain" Phelps, and the
younger man was Monroe Holt. Homer visited Keene Val-
ley a number of times, but exactly when is uncertain.
Fortunately there is a great deal more information about
his life in what is now the North Woods Club, near Minerva,
of which he was a charter member and where he painted
most of his Adirondack water colors.
Homer first went to this remote spot with two fellow
painters, Eliphalet Terry and John Fitch. At that time it was
merely a clearing in the wilderness with one farm on it be-
longing to a family named Baker, who had settled there in
1854. In 1859 Terry painted a picture of the clearing which
is reproduced (pi. 37). The two main sources of information
about the place and Homer's visits there are Terry's letters
to the Baker's daughter Juliette, which are in existence, and
the diary which Juliette kept from 1865 until 1886. Actually,
she lived to a ripe old age, dying in 1930. The present writer
remembers her well. After 1886 — the year the land was
purchased to found the North Woods Club — the entries
in the club register of Homer's visits, all in his own hand-
writing, give a record of the times he spent there. The last,
dated June 25, 1908, in a quavering hand — he had suffered
a stroke earlier that year — mentions that he shot a bear.
He made two drawings of this which are still at the Club and
are illustrated (pis. 31, 32). These are probably the last
things Homer did in the Adirondacks. He died two years
later in 1910.
We know from a letter of Terry's that Homer first went
to the Baker farm in September 1870 and it was in that year
that he published the woodcut, Trapping in the Adirondacks,
in Every Saturday on December 24, 1870 (pi. 3). Terry
wrote Juliette a letter about this, referring to the picture of
Rufus Wallace and Charlie, who was probably Charlie
Lancashire, a friend of the Bakers and said that Homer
would send her a copy. Rufus Wallace figures in a number
of Homer's later pictures with a younger man, Mike
"Farmer" Flynn.
And so the life in the Adirondacks began which was to go
on intermittently for the next thirty-eight years.
For an account of this life, the sources are again Terry's
letters, and the diary. Terry wrote an itinerary of the trip
from New York. They first took the Hudson River night
boat to Albany; then the train to the "stop" which was ap-
parently Saratoga, then the Lake George stage as far as
Chestertown. Homer had done a picture of this stagecoach
as early as 1869 which was used as the cover for Appleton's
Journal on July 24 of that year. At Chestertown they were
met by a team driven by Wesley Rice, Juliette Baker's hus-
band, and brought to the Baker farm. The trip as far as
Chestertown took twenty-four hours. I should think the
last leg — from Chestertown to the farm — would have
14
taken at least a day; thirty-six hours in all, which suggests
the remoteness of the place, and undoubtedly part of its
appeal for Homer.
The life that greeted him when he arrived is vividly des-
cribed in Juliette's diary. It was one of extraordinary hard-
ship. These people almost literally lived off their rugged
land. Spring came late and winter early, as it still does, and
in the short summer season they worked from morning
until night to keep body and soul together. Everything was
used. Hay not only fed the livestock, but provided stuffing
for bed ticks. Wool was spun, woven and made into the
clothing they could not afford to buy, and in addition socks
and mittens were knitted for sale to obtain the pathetically
small amounts of cash needed for what they could not pro-
vide for themselves. Sugar was maple sugar, boiled down
from the sap, drawn from the maples in the forest. Every
berry was picked; wild strawberries, raspberries, blueber-
ries, cranberries and so forth were preserved. Finally, of
course, there were the fish and game that were the main
supply of sustenance.
This way of life that Homer sought out for so many years
seems to me important to an understanding of his work.
Many writers have made much of the fact that Homer was
a sportsman. No doubt to an extent he was, but it is also
necessary to realize that the hunters and fishermen who
populate his pictures were engaged in these activities in
order to provide themselves with enough to eat. Their very
lives depended on their skill. This Homer understood. He
shared their lives. His relationship with them, and feeling
for them, was very much the same as his understanding and
caring for the Maine fishermen with whom he associated —
practically to the exclusion of everyone else — at Prout's
Neck.
The subject of his painting is consistent throughout his
life. It is man in his environment; the relationship between
man and nature. For all the hardship involved, the world
he chose for his subject matter had also many and great
beauties, which he observed closely, intimately, and set
down on paper or canvas with a simplicity and accuracy
which in its own way is unparalleled. For he was first and
last an artist — an observer — and his powers of observa-
tion were extraordinary. They were not especially intellec-
tual. He does not seem to have read very much, and his
pronouncements on his art, which are rare, are apt to be
inarticulate and confused. He seems to have lived in a soli-
tary world of feeling, observing and setting down. How well
he did these things.
I have said earlier that the dominant mood of Homer's
pictures is one of quiet, of stillness, remoteness and solitude.
Even a picture of the burst of a leaping trout seems only to
accentuate the surrounding and enveloping silence, the
tumult of a waterfall seems muted by the quiet of the forest
through which it flows.
Great art has been called the expression of the universal in
terms of the particular. The particulars Homer so loved and
painted so well are in all these pictures. He captured per-
fectly the movement of a leaping trout, the line of a fly cast,
the awkward posture of a hunting dog balanced on a log (pi.
12) or a deer straddled across another log, drinking (pi. 48).
This last is one of his most amazing achievements. Homer
15
could scarcely have gotten very close to this shy creature,
but it is almost a close-up, and captures all the nervous ten-
sion of the animal. There is the backward glance of the eye
always on the alert for ever present danger, even while in-
tent on drinking, the ears that seem almost to twitch as they
listen, or perhaps get rid of an annoying fly, and the un-
gainly but entirely characteristic posture, here somehow
made graceful; and for those who deplore his realism, it is
notable that there are strokes of pure cerulean blue in the
painting of the animal's coat.
But there is more here than the particulars of concrete
fact. There are the particulars of mood and atmosphere.
The picture of the deer is a comment on all of the mysterious
life of wild animals in the forest, for it is, curiously, a very
mysterious picture, and this is where the general emerges
from the particular.
He could paint equally well and endow with mood, the
dark waters of Adirondack ponds broken by the silvery
wake of a canoe, the torrent of a swollen brook in spring
flood, the overcast skies of a perfect fisherman's day, the
fisherman himself, and the hunter pausing to rest, silhouet-
ted against the blue distance of receding hills. Sometimes the
details are so factual they are funny. Who has not sweated
under the protections necessary to ward off black flies in
June? And what fisherman has not been half humorously
exasperated by the ubiquituous and infuriating "punkin
seed" who with idiotic persistency eternally thwarts the pur-
pose of the most perfect cast? (pi. 18).
In these pictures there are often things that cannot be
seen but felt, and which imply a whole world and way of
life: the stillness in the deep woods, the hush over a summer
pond, broken only by the hum of gnats, the sad, clear whistle
of a white throat, the occasional splash of a deer munching
lily pads or the loon's call.
Finally wooded or barren mountainsides, the mirror of a
lake in the mysterious depth of a valley floor, shifting pat-
terns of cloud and cloud shadow, the changing light of
morning and evening, good weather and bad, evoke the
sheer wonder of the whole physical world, each detail, each
aspect of it minutely and sensitively observed and meticu-
lously rendered.
Mr. Edgar P. Richardson in his brilliant book American
Romantic Painting has this to say about American ro-
mantic artists. "Their preference was to paint the things and
people about them; their method to relate their observa-
tions to sentiment on the one hand and to actuality on the
other, so that the artist's poetic feeling and the observer's
simple experience of having lived may meet in one trans-
parent image. In the great division between those whose
wish is to understand the great and wonderful world about
them, and those who wish to impose themselves and their
personality upon the world, the American romantics take
their stand with the former."
It seems to me that this applies exactly to the work of
Winslow Homer, and explains the greatness of his work.
I do not believe there is any such thing as realism in art.
There are only the innumerable visions of reality that indi-
vidual artists have set down. This was particularly true of
Homer; the facts in his pictures are invariably subject to his
overall vision of the world of man and nature, which in his
16
day was novel and personal. This in turn determined his They served him well, as he did them,
technical methods in which he was also an innovator, and
since he was almost entirely self-trained, one might say that James W. Fosburgh
the Adirondacks and the life there were in part his teachers. Minerva, New York
17
SOME OF HOMER'S ADIRONDACK MODELS
Homer's first visit to the Adirondacks was about 1870 when
he stayed at an artist's colony in Keene Valley. Other paint-
ers there were Roswell Shurtleff, Arthur and Ernest Parton,
John Fitch, Carleton Wiggins, George McCord and several
others. Adirondack Lake and The Two Guides were Homer's
most famous oils of the period. The latter shows "Old
Mountain" Phelps explaining to a younger woodsman some
of the mysteries of the high Essex range of mountains. The
younger man has been recently identified as Monroe Holt,
grandson of Smith Holt, who settled in Keene Valley in
1806. Monroe Holt was a substantial citizen. He served
many years as justice of the peace and also as supervisor of
the Town of Keene.
In the 1870's Homer began to stay at Baker's, a rough
mountain wilderness hotel about ten miles from Minerva in
Essex county. Later Baker's became the North Woods Club
and Homer became a charter member. Here, at the North
Woods Club between 1889 and 1894 he produced in great
excellence and volume, mainly in the watercolor medium.
In the North Woods Club pictures two Adirondack
guides appear frequently, both separately and together —
the first a young, supple, handsome man of 20 or so with a
proud bearing; the second a much older but no less hand-
some man of about 60, with a full beard and the build and
habits of a born woodsman. Through the assistance of Mr.
Hugh Fosburgh of the North Woods Club, these men have
recently been identified. The younger man was Michael
Francis Flynn, well-known throughout the woods as
"Farmer Flynn." He was later to settle in Minerva and to
serve long years as town road commissioner. He died in
1944, at age 73, and is survived by one sister, Mrs. Kate
Shaughnessy of Newcomb, and several children, including
Mrs. Mary Hawkins of Minerva, Mrs. Rose Brown of
North Creek, Mrs. Elizabeth Filkins of Riverside and a son,
Thomas Flynn of Olmstedville. Another son, Patrick, now
lives in North Carolina. His brother Harry Flynn is living
in Olmstedville.
The older, bearded guide has been tentatively identified
as Rufus Wallace, a resident of Minerva and a bachelor,
who died around the turn of the century.
John R. Curry
Blue Mountain Lake, New York
19
ADIRONDACK WORKS BY WINSLOW HOMER
Compiled by Lloyd Goodrich and Edith Havens Goodrich
The following list includes all known oil paintings, watercolors and illustrations by Winslow Homer which can be
identified as being of Adirondack subjects. The list does not include drawings. The largest collection of such draw-
ings is at the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration.
(Those paintings included in the exhibition have been marked with an asterisk, and those paintings which are
illustrated in the catalogue are marked with a dagger, r.b.i.)
1865
ILLUSTRATION :
Our Watering Places — Horse Racing at Saratoga. Harper's Weekly, August 26, 1865, p. 533.
1869
ILLUSTRATIONS :
On the Road to Lake George. Appleton's Journal, July 24, 1869, cover.
At the Spring: Saratoga. Hearth and Home, August 28, 1869, p. 561.
1870
oils:
^Adirondack Lake. 24"x 38". Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle.
The Trapper, or Adirondack Lake. 20"x 30". Harold T. Pulsifer Collection, Colby College, Waterville, Maine.
ILLUSTRATIONS \
A Quiet Day in the Woods. Appleton's Journal, June 25, 1870, p. 701.
*\Trapping in the Adirondacks. Every Saturday, December 24, 1870, p. 849.
21
1871
ILLUSTRATIONS :
*\Deer Stalking in the Adirondacks. Every Saturday, January 21, 1871, p. 57.
*\Lumbering in Winter. Every Saturday, January 28, 1871, p. 89.
1874
oil:
Waiting for a Bite. 12"x 20". Estate of Mrs. Arthur G. Cummer, Jacksonville, Florida.
WATERCOLORS :
*\Eliphalet Terry. 9%"x 12%". Century Association, New York.
*\Lake Shore. 9%"x 1334". Peter Salm, New York.
Man in a Punt, Fishing. 9Vi"x 13 ffl. Mrs. George P. Putnam, Wayne, Pennsylvania.
Trappers Resting. 9Vi"x 13Vi"- Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. Payson, New York.
ILLUSTRATIONS :
*f Waiting for a Bite. Harper's Weekly, August 22, 1874, p. 693.
*\Camping Out in the Adirondack Mountains. Harper's Weekly, November 7, 1874, p. 920.
undated, probably 1874
oil:
Playing a Fish. Wy^x 18Vi". Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
WATERCOLOR :
Why Don't the Suckers Bite? 7-1 /16"x 13V&". Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts.
1876
oil:
f The Two Guides. 24"x 40". Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
22
undated, probably 1876
oils:
Beaver Mountain, Adirondacks. 12"x 11 Vs". Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey.
*\The Guide. 11%'x 7%'. Hirschl & Adler, New York.
1880
oil:
\Campfire. 23%rx 38V&"- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
1889
WATERCOLORS '.
Adirondack Lake. 13Vi"x 19%". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
Big Trees, Adirondacks. \3V2"\ 19i/2". Wildenstein & Co., New York.
Casting for a Rise. 9-l/16"x 19y8"- Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Simon, New City, New York.
Casting in the Falls. 14"x 20". Mrs. Charles R. Henschel, New York.
Deer in a Lake, Adirondacks. 13%"* 19%"- Mrs. John Briggs Potter, Boston, Massachusetts.
A Fisherman's Day. 12*4 "x ^lA" ■ Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
A Good One. 12s/8"x 19%". The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York.
A Good Strike, Leaping Trout. 13y8"x 19". John S. Ames, North Easton, Massachusetts.
The Guide. 13%"x 19%". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
*\The Guide. 14"x 20". Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. Payson, New York.
*\Hunter and Dog, Adirondacks. 13y8"x 19%*. Mr. and Mrs. Pieter W. Fosburgh, Cherry Plain, New York.
*-\Hunting Dog on a Log. 13y8"x 19%". Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts.
Jumping Trout. l2Yz"\ 19%"- Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York.
^Leaping Trout. 13%"x 19%". Mrs. Charles R. Henschel, New York.
Leaping Trout. 13Wx 19%*. Mrs. Ralph T. King, Cleveland, Ohio (1944).
The Lone Fisherman. 14"x 20". Mrs. Charles R. Henschel, New York.
\An October Day. 13%*x 19Vi". Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
A Quiet Pool on a Sunny Day. \2l/i"x ^Vi" ■ Mrs. Edwin S. Webster, Boston, Massachusetts.
The Red Canoe. 13%"x \9y2". Mrs. Edwin S. Webster, Boston, Massachusetts.
23
1889 continued
Salmon Fishing. 13Vi*x \9y4" . Mrs. Muir B. Snow, Jr., Grosse Point, Michigan.
Solitude. 13%"x 19%*. William A. Putnam, Cornwall, New York.
Trout. 19%'x 133/s". Grand Central Art Galleries, New York.
Trout Breaking. \3y2"x \9y2" . Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
*]Two Trout. 19y8"x I3ys". International Business Machines Corp., New York.
^Waiting for the Hunt. 13y8"x 19y8". Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, R. I.
ETCHING :
Fly Fishing. 17y2"x 22%" (plate size).
UNDATED, PROBABLY 1889
WATERCOLORS :
Adirondack Lake. \3y2"x 19%". Mrs. Richard De Wolfe Brixey, Bedford Hills, New York.
Hudson River, Logging. 14"x 21". Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
Leaping Trout. 13x,4"x 19*4". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
Logjam. \4y4"x20y4". Ralph H. Norton, Chicago, Illinois.
*]On the Trail. 12%"x 1934". Mrs. Charles R. Henschel, New York.
*\Valley and Hillside. 13y8"x 19y8". Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, New York.
^Waterfall, Adirondacks. L3%*x 19y8". Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
1890
WATERCOLORS :
End of the Day, Adirondacks. 13y8"x 19Vi". Art Institute of Chicago.
Netting the Fish. \3y2"x I9y4". Art Institute of Chicago.
*\An Unexpected Catch. 12"x 20". Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. Payson, New York.
undated, probably 1890
oil:
The Woodchopper. 10y8"x 15%". Ambassador and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York.
24
undated, probably 1890 continued
WATERCOLORS :
*]Fishing in the Adirondacks. 13%"x l9Yz". Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University.
Sunrise in the Adirondacks. 14"x 21". Colonel and Mrs. Edgar W. Garbisch, New York.
1891
oil:
^Huntsman and Dogs. 28 lA"\ 48". Philadelphia Museum of Art.
WATERCOLORS \
The Boatman. 13i4"x \9l/i" . Brooklyn Museum.
*]Building a Smudge. 13Vi"x 20". Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Emlen Stokes, Moorestown, New Jersey.
*\Guide Carrying Deer. 13J4"x 191/2"- Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. Payson, New York.
]Mink Pond. 13V2"x 19%". Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University.
Two Trout. 18%*x 13y8". Wildenstein & Co., New York.
The Woodcutter. 1 3 ^4 "x 19%"- John S. Ames, North Easton, Massachusetts.
Woodsman and Fallen Tree. 13Vi"x 19%". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
1892
oil:
\Hound and Hunter. 28"x 47i/2"- National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
WATERCOLORS :
Adirondack Guide. Hy/'xH1/^'. Art Institute of Chicago.
^Adirondacks. 13%"x 19%*. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University.
Adirondacks, Man and Canoe. I4y2"x 20%"- Mrs. J. Gardner Bradley, Wellesley, Massachusetts.
After the Hunt. 14^4'x 20Vi". Los Angeles County Museum.
The Blue Boat. 14i/2"x 20%". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
\Blue Monday. 12"x211/4". Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University.
Boy Fishing. 14%"x 21". Dr. Anthony T. Ladd, New York.
25
1892 continued
A Brook Trout. 13%"x 19%". Mrs. Richard E. Danielson, Boston.
*}Burnt Mountain. 13y8"x 19i/2". Mrs. Charles R. Henschel, New York.
*\Canoeing in the Adirondacks. 14%"x 21 1/&". Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence A. Fleischman, Detroit.
\Deer Drinking. 13y2"x 19y2". Mr. and Mrs. Courtlandt P. Dixon, New York.
*-\The End of the Hunt. 14y2"x 21". Bowdoin College Museum of Fine Arts, Brunswick, Maine.
The Fallen Deer. \7>l/i"\ 19y2". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
*}A Good Shot. 141/2 "x 21". Mrs. Charles R. Henschel, New York.
*\Hound and Hunter. 13y2"x 19y2". Mrs. Charles R. Henschel, New York.
Hudson River. 13% "x 19^g". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In the Fog. 14y2"x 21". Mrs. Edwin S. Webster, Boston.
The Interrupted Tete-a-Tete, Adirondacks, or North Woods Club, Adirondacks. 14i4"x 21 y»". Art Institute of
Chicago.
The Lone Boat, North Woods Club, Adirondacks. XAy/x 211/8". Art Institute of Chicago.
Mink Lake, Adirondacks. 131/2"x 20%". Cleveland Museum of Art.
Morning. 12"x 19V4". Mrs. Homer Strong, Rochester, New York.
Paddling at Dusk. 14y4"x 21". Dr. James H. Lockhart, Jr., Rochester, New York (1940).
*]Pickerel Fishing. 10%"x I9Vi*. Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. Payson, New York.
^Prospect Rock, Essex County, New York. 13y2"x 19!/2". National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D. C.
The Return to Camp. 13i/2"x 19i/2". Mrs. Edwin S. Webster, Boston.
Two Men Rowing on a Lake. 14^g"x 21". Estate of Miss Mabel Choate, New York.
UNDATED, PROBABLY 1892
WATERCOLORS :
Campfire, Adirondacks. 14%"x 21". Art Institute of Chicago.
*\Deer at Fence. 13%"x 20". Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, New York.
Man and Boy in Boat. 13%"x \9l/i" . Mrs. Edward W. Moore, Cotuit, Massachusetts.
Old Settlers. 21"x 14y2". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Ranger, Adirondacks. BW'x 19^"- John S. Ames, North Easton, Massachusetts.
26
1894
WATERCOLORS '.
Adirondack Guide. 14% "x 20%". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Casting the Fly. 14%"x 20%". Mrs. Charles R. Henschel, New York.
Dog on a Log. 14"x 20%". Edward W. Grew, Dover, Massachusetts.
Hilly Landscape. 141/2"x21". Mrs. Boylston A. Beal, Manchester, Massachusetts.
Hunting Dog among Dead Trees. \4Yz"x 21". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
*\lndian Village in the Adirondacks. 14y8"x 20%". Alexander M. White, New York.
*\Old Friends. 2iy2"x 15»/8". Worcester Art Museum.
The Rapids — Hudson River, Adirondacks. 14%"x 21". Art Institute of Chicago.
UNDATED, PROBABLY 1894
WATERCOLORS :
Playing Him. 14%"x21%". Frederic H. Curtiss, Boston.
The Tree Across the Trail. 13i/8"x 19". Bradford Lambert, New York (1936).
1900
WATERCOLORS :
^Fish and Butterflies. 10%"x 15%*. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
^The Pioneer. 13Vi"x 20Vi". Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Rise. 13y8"x 20*/8". Mrs. Charles R. Henschel, New York.
UNDATED, PROBABLY 1900
WATERCOLOR :
The Bass. 14"x 21". M. Knoedler & Co.
1902
WATERCOLOR \
*f Mountain Landscape, or Burnt Mountain, Adirondacks. 13%"x 20%". Addison Gallery of American Art,
Andover, Massachusetts.
27
PICTURES IN THE EXHIBITION
2. Winslow Homer at Seventy-two. 1908
Photograph courtesy of Mr. Lloyd Goodrich
30
3. Trapping in the Adirondacks
Lent by Mr. and Mrs. Pieter W. Fosburgh
Wood engraving 1870
31
4. Deerstalking in the Adirondacks in Winter
Lent by Mr. and Mrs. James W. Fosburgh
Wood engraving 1 87 1
32
5. Lumbering in Winter
Lent by Mr. and Mrs. James W. Fosburgh
Wood engra ving 1871
33
Camping Out in the Adirondack Mountains
Lent by Mr. and Mrs. James W. Fosburgh
Wood engraving 1874
34
7. Waiting for a Bite
Lent by Mr. and Mrs. James W. Fosburgh
Wood engraving 1 874
35
8. Eliphalet Terry
Lent by The Century Association, New York
Watercolor 1874
36
9. Lake Shore (The Fallen Tree. Landscape.)
Lent by Mr. Peter A. Salm
Watercolor 1874
37
10. Adirondack Guide Oil Probably 1876
Lent by Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York
38
11. Hunter and Dog, Adirondacks (Adirondack Woods, Guide and Dog.)
Lent by Mr. and Mrs. Pieter W. Fosburgh
Watercolor 1889
39
12. Hunting Dog on a Log (Dog on a Log.)
Lent by Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover
Water color 1889
40
13. Leaping Trout
Lent by Mrs. Charles R. Henschel
Water color 1889
41
14. On the Trail
Lent by Mrs. Charles R. Henschel
Watercolor Probably 1889
42
15. The Guide
Lent by Mr. Charles S. Payson
Water color 1889
43
16. Two Trout (Square Tails. Rainbow Trout.) Watercolor 1889
Lent by the International Business Machines Collection, New York
44
17. Valley and Hillside
Lent by The Cooper Union Museum, New York
Watercolor Probably 1889
45
18. An Unexpected Catch (Fish Taking a Fly.)
Lent by Mr. Charles S. Payson
Watercolor 1890
46
19. Fishing in the Adirondacks
Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
Watercolor 1890
47
20. Building a Smudge
Lent by Dr. and Mrs. S. Emlen Stokes
Watercolor 1891
48
21. A Good Shot
Lent by Mrs. Charles R. Henschel
Watercolor 1892
49
22. Burnt Mountain
Lent by Mrs. Charles R. Henschel
Watercolor 1892
50
23. Canoeing in the Adirondacks
Lent by Mr. Lawrence A. Fleischman
Watercolor 1892
51
24. Deer at a Fence
Lent by The Cooper Union Museum, New York
Watercolor Probably 1892
52
25. End of the Hunt
Bowdoin College Museum of Fine Arts, Brunswick, Maine
Watercolor 1892
53
Hound and Hunter
Lent by Mrs. Charles R. Henschel
54
27. Pickerel Fishing
Lent by Mr. Charles S. Payson
Watercolor 1892
55
28. Indian Village, Adirondack^
Lent by Mr. Alexander M. White
Watercolor 1894
56
29. Old Friends
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester
Watercolor 1894
57
30. Mountain Landscape (Burnt Mountain.)
Lent by Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover
Watercolor 1902
58
2*"7?-K
31. Sketch 4y4"x Sfo"
Lent by the North Woods Club
Pencil 1908
59
32. Sketch 4%'x 9%*
Lent by the North Woods Club
Pencil 1908
60
OTHER EXAMPLES OF HOMER'S WORK
33. Homer's Model Rufus Wallace. (In center)
Photograph courtesy Mrs. Harry Surprenant
34. Homer's Model Mike "Farmer" Flynn (On right)
Photograph courtesy Mrs. Elizabeth Filkins
62
35. Homer's Model Orson "Mountain" Phelps
Adirondack Museum Photograph
63
36. Lake George by John Frederick Kensett (1816 - 1872)
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Maria DeWitt Jesup, 1915.
Oil
64
37. Baker's Farm (Later the site of the North Woods Club)
Courtesy North Woods Club
1 9"x 30" by Eliphalet Terry ( 1 826 - 1 896)
Oil 1859
65
38. Adirondack Lake
Courtesy The Henry Gallery, University of Washington. Collection: Horace C. Henry
Oil 1870
66
. Si
%* •»«> >»• --.TV. • ' -r ■ \ •
39. The Two Guides
Courtesy Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Oil 1876
67
40. Campfire
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Henry Keney Pomeroy, 1927
Oil 1880
68
41. An October Day
Courtesy Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Watercolor 1889
69
42. Waiting for the Hunt
Courtesy Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Gift of Jesse Metcalf
70
43. Waterfall in the Adirondacks
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
Watercolor Probably 1889
71
44. Huntsman and Dogs
Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, William L. Elkins Collection
Oil 1891
72
45. The Mink Pond
Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Grenville L. Winthrop Collection
Watercolor 1891
73
46. Adirondacks (Hunter in the Adirondack^.)
Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
Watercolor 1892
74
47. Blue Monday (Adirondack Lake.)
Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Grenville L. Winthrop Collection
Watercolor 1892
75
48. Deer Drinking
Courtesy Mr. Courtlandt F. Dixon
Watercolor 1892
76
'PfO*??/^. /?*» .
49. Fish and Butterflies
Courtesy Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Watercolor 1900
77
50. Hound and Hunter
Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C, Gift of Stephen C. Clark
Oil 1892
78
51. North Woods Color lithograph 1896
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dick Fund, 1927. From the watercolor Playing Him, probably 1894
79
52. Prospect Rock, Essex County, New York
Courtesy National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution
Watercolor 1892
80
53. The Pioneer
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lazarus Fund, 1910
Watercolor 1900
81
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